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For most people in the occult sense you "Evoke" something to appear / manifest before you and "Invoke" something to manifest inside of you. So to be honest I am confused at the idea of invoking a power animal to appear / manifest inside of you.

Regarding the appearance of a deity appearing to be honest you don't give enough info to make a comment on that. You don't state what the animal was so can't say if it is a related connection. For instance you try to summon a deer and Artemis or Diana appear who use a deer as an avatar for them. So manifesting the deer could be seen potentially as calling them via their avatar or associated animal symbol.

You seem to be saying you did an invocation to summon a power animal. But again not enough info provided to really say just what you did or where you got the information to do the invocation. Yet if it is an invocation then it's summoning a spirit form of something more so than a power form or spirit animal. Considering one usually does some form of journey work to meet a guide type form not an invocation / evocation type working.

But to me to much missing here to make any sort of logical analysis of why or what it means. Other than from a high magics or ceremonial magics one invokes something into themselves and evokes something to appear before them.

Ah, sorry, I mixed up invoke and evoke. I meant I evoked what I thought was my power animal, and a deity turned up instead. I mean, yes the deity in question does take the form of that animal in mythology, but I had never even heard of them before. The name just popped in my head as I was communicating with them. So I looked it up, and they don't really have much connection to my Tutelary deity (Diana). So I found it a little bizarre, as it was Diana who showed me who my animal was.

Perhaps if you gave us all three parts we might be better able to respond. By all three parts I am referring to what the animal in question is, which deity showed up and which showed you what the animal was. You've told us Diana showed you the animal but to be honest which persona of Diana?

Diana Nemorensis? Diana of the Aventine? Diana in connection with Streghia? Diana as conflated with Artemis? Diana as the Roman goddess? Heck even Diana as she is conflated with Artumes the Etruscan goddess could be asked. One could even go so far as to ask is it the Diana who becomes conflated with Artemis of Ephesus who becomes conflated with Diana of Ephesos who becomes conflated with Mary of Ephesos Mother of Jesus and known as Queen of Heaven. The reason I ask is Diana Luciferia would be seen with two torches, Then you have Diana who is associated with a singular torch or long spear and dogs, Diana who is more akin to Artemis who has bow & arrows and stags for instance. That doesn't even touch bloody Diana who was at Nemi as part of the Orestes story.

Okay, so I was praying to Diana one night, after having contemplated about my power animal for a few weeks. I suddenly saw a unicorn really clearly in front of me and took it as a sign that was my animal. So I said thank you. Next time I did a ritual I included asking the unicorn to come to my circle so I could get to know them better. But instead as I was asking I heard the name "Zephyrus", which I had never heard before. I looked it up and he is a greek god of one of the four winds. Sometimes he takes equine form, so I was confused that by asking for what I thought was my power animal, a deity of the westerly wind approached me instead.

Since I wrote this question, I did another informal rite to clear things up. And I got the answer, for years I've had a trickster spirit messing with me (I was not always a witch, but I was always very spiritual). When "Zephyrus" 'returned', I immediately recognised the signature of that trickster spirit, and banished it. I do believe that for whatever reason (and I have an idea of why, actually, which is preventable in the future), this trickster spirit showed up and pretended to be both my animal and this deity. I don't think either of them actually showed up.

So I believe what I saw that night after praying was genuine and must have been some kind of guide and answer to my question, but my rite was hijacked that time.

By the way, when I refer to Diana, she is all those aspects to me in one go.

Perhaps your to quick to drop things. Zephyrus being the western wind might be the western plains as well or western direction or directing you to look to the western area. It also could be suggestive of open expanses or free range and blowing. When it comes to the Hellene's and the winds you sort of have to look at the symbology even the daemon name as both figurative and symbolic. You also have to consider they don't take equine form sometimes they were considered to be in the form of horse pretty much all the time and the wind gods were the fathers of all the immortal horses, which would include unicorns.

When dealing with the wind gods you have to look at them as The Anemoi, who were seen as either winged human's or horses, but always male. Their female counter parts being the Aellai Harpyiai, Harpies. Later stories have them as winged men, early stories have them as horses more than not.

Figure romance lore has lots of lovely stories about virgin girls and unicorns but that tends to be where it ends. Reality stories tends to end there. Historical hunting stories tend to use virgins as a guise to lure the unicorn into traps where they can be captured and / or killed by the hidden hunter as the unicorn lays it's head upon the maiden's lap or allows her to touch it's head. A great many of the paintings and tapestries show the maiden and unicorn captured in the center of the image but the hunter in hidden int he foliage or stands in the shadow. Perhaps the western wind simply was coming to see who was calling one of his daughter's? That's not counting the Christian motif that came to be included with the unicorn lore.

There is one other small aspect as well, Diana has been loosely conflated to the Celtic Goddess Epona, the horse goddess of the Gauls of modern France. There really is not a whole lot of info about Epona to be found outside of the typical modern "Pagan" spin on things.

Will state that it might or might not have been a trickster spirit but normally a trickster will work in a way that will rely upon you having an idea of the trick to begin with. If you didn't know who the people were to begin with then the trick wouldn't have been effective to trick you or teach you which is usually what the trickster tries to do in the long run.

Thank you for your reply, it's very insightful. I will consider the possibility that Zephyrus did approach me if the unicorn was in fact one of his daughters, but I still know the trickster spirit was there, and there was confusion. I will meditate on the situation some more.

I did not know about the Aellai Harpyiai, I will research them. Actually, from what I remember didn't Zephyrus mate with a Harpy? So did the Anemoi as a whole mate with the Harpies?

Also I didn't know that about Diana and Epona, that's definitely new to me. I am interested to read more about that.

Not sure if the Anemoi mated with the Harpies as much as the Harpies were considered to be the female counterparts to them. Sort of the winged female wind daemons type thing. I think one of the biggest differences though is there are only four or eight Anemoi but seem's an unlimited number of Harpies though a number are named in the mythologies. In that capacity they are sort of like wind gusts where the Anemoi are wind directions.

The Diana / Artemis & Epona conflating is a later Roman Empire conflating. Yet like I said there is not a lot of info on Epona except what you see that is "Neo-Pagan" influenced for the most part. But it is in part due to Epona being both a Horse goddess and limited nature fertility goddess. Her fertility aspect has a lot of similarity to fecundity as since it deals with livestock, ie horses, mules, ponies which applies to her Diana / Artemis connection. In the fertility aspect as growing though it resembles Demeter / Persephone more so. In that capacity your looking at an influence from Diana Ephesus and probably Diana Nemorensis in her trinity form both of which have a fertility influence and part of a Pontia Theron presence.